


Hysteresis

by marzanna



Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canonical Character Death, Dreams and Nightmares, Drug Addiction, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Tribunal, Recovery, Superstar Cop (Disco Elysium), Vomiting, Withdrawal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:41:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marzanna/pseuds/marzanna
Summary: If Kim were in the business of judgment, of determining deservedness, he would say that Harry doesn’t deserve this. Comfort, that is. He has spent a long time - longer than the past week, longer than Kim truly understands - wrecking his proverbial Kineema without a hint of self-awareness. Penance is a key tenet of many major religions, that of the Dolorians but one of them.But he finds, as he keeps Harry’s hair from falling into his face again, that he doesn’t want that penance to come like this: receptors howling in agony as they adjust to the new normal.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Comments: 10
Kudos: 120
Collections: Disco Elysium Big Bang





	Hysteresis

**Author's Note:**

> Harry goes cold turkey. It's always easier said than done.
> 
> \-----
> 
> my piece for the Disco Elysium Big Bang! i had a blast writing this and working with the talented [kkatsudone](https://kkatsudone.tumblr.com/), who worked on the illustration accompanying this fic! it is fantastic and a real treat and i am honored.

Some say that there comes a time in a man’s life when tragedy befalls him, or those around him, and a vast mirror is held up to him. His actions, his being, and the consequences thereof; he has no choice but to peer inside, dizzying facets bared at last. This is the foundation of a good many books which Harry has resolutely chosen not to read. Harry has had half a dozen of these same tragedies befall him in as many days, and he is different. He looks into it and he has seen nothing. The crooning voices of his neurons, decayed and fraying, have given him a fat fucking nothing to work with.

And out of that immense, foetal nothing, he rises again. As he’s done a week past. But there, then, he was babied out of sleep by the familiar buzz of amphetamines, that white lightning. Not that he’d known it at the time. Here, now, he lacks that creature comfort. And so the first part of him to blossom into existence is his leg. It throbs like a real son of a bitch.

Half Light grips him and cranks his heartbeat into overdrive. Harry’s arms are leaden - _opiates_ , Electrochemistry supplies helpfully, _the good stuff_ \- and he smacks himself upside the head by accident as he fumbles for… something. He’s not sure what. Escape, maybe. When Harry pries his eyes open at last, there’s a blinding light, a faintly-whirring halo, and there is Kim. Alive. A hand on his shoulder, pressing him back into bed.

“Calm down,” Kim says, as authoritative as ever. Harry’s listening before he can figure out _why_ he’s listening. Adrenaline recedes back into his glands, following untold neurochemical pathways as Kim’s voice, low and measured, brings him back down to earth.

Seems that Kim’s subdued demeanor isn’t just for his benefit. Kim sports an intermittent squint, in time with blood pulsing through his temples. Bruising. Migraine. Concussion? Kim’s pupils wouldn’t be blown out for other, less savory reasons, Harry supposes. He’s been there a time or two before. 

There are words that flow around him, details about the aftermath of the tribunal that spiral past like bilgewater down the bathtub drain. They only leave slick, grimy residue behind. Kim is alive, others decidedly less so - the blond one, the big one, the squirrely little bastard. Ruby. An emotion surges through him that he can’t place. As ever, though, Empathy remains shriveled and limp, refusing to give him a nudge in the right direction. Harry chalks it up to vague unease and blocks it out.

“Are you ready to limp?” Kim says suddenly - it feels sudden to Harry, anyway - and there’s a hand at his elbow now, waiting.

He’s not, but he’s a fucking rockstar, and he nods anyway as he lurches to his feet. Harry’s teeth grind themselves flat from the effort. Pain Threshold curls up nice and tight in his belly, crooning in his ear that this is good. He deserves this. An ever-present reminder of his failure… and of Kim’s steady hands at his thigh, stitching and lancing him, Electrochemistry whispers. They’ll be there forever, in a way. There’s no better declaration of love than that.

These two are dangerous together, Harry thinks distantly. A positive feedback loop.

So he limps. The urge to run burns in his legs, sense memory at odds with his newfound ungainliness. It’s a bad idea, he soon finds. One of many. Instead he slings his dud leg around as if it’s so much dead weight. It’s a foreign feeling, like piloting his body from some recessed, detached interior. Like something out of those science fiction books. Not that he’s much for that sort of thing.

Harry peers at his face in the mirror, cleaner and clearer than last he saw it, and runs a hand through limp hair. There’s an expression on his face, but the Expression itself is curiously absent. His mouth twists and gurns in an effort to coax it back. All he accomplishes is baring his teeth in a horrible grimace. From bad to worse. He closes his mouth with an audible click.

Next to him, he hears Kim say, “I had Garte unlock the door between our rooms. It was more convenient that way.”

Harry’s heart revs up again. A new door to open, right, one that had taunted him with its inaccessibility and its… closed-ness, but the tingling in his fingers as he reaches for the doorknob (without even getting proper permission first, mind) isn’t just Interfacing’s constant akathisic itch. Jostling purple heads clamor to tell him what it _really_ is, but Harry doesn’t listen to them.

Kim lets him swing the door open anyway to reveal a perfectly ordinary room. Clean. Organized. Nothing he didn’t expect. “Nice digs,” Harry tells him.

“They’re the same ‘digs’ as yours. Less one drunken breakdown.” Kim’s voice isn’t unkind, just stating a fact. He checks his wristwatch as Harry shuffles from point to point of interest. Bed made, notes carefully arranged on his desk. “Are you finished? There shouldn’t be anything terribly interesting to you here. I don’t keep terribly interesting habits.”

“I think you’re interesting,” he blurts out. Kim raises his eyebrows, but doesn’t respond.

_You’re not the flattering type, and he doesn’t know what you’d stand to gain from flattering him, anyway. But you’re hardly the honest type, either. He doesn’t know what to make of it._

Irritation spikes in his blood. The hell would Kim know. A cutting retort nearly erupts from him, but Composure wrestles Half Light into submission before it gets the chance. _A little gratefulness wouldn’t kill you_ , it reminds him, and Volition chimes in to tell him that it would sound slightly fucking absurd for him to lose his shit at something Kim never said aloud. They might be right, but that doesn’t mean Harry has to like it.

* * *

Kim had anticipated that it would be slow-going after Harry came back to the world of the living, but he hadn’t really prepared himself for just how _jarring_ it would be to go from sprinting after Harry to this new start-stop gait. He finds himself awkwardly waiting in place for Harry to get to Klaasje’s door, not having paid much attention to his own quick pace. A week’s work of running around Martinaise has conditioned Kim well. Too well, perhaps.

The pain doesn’t seem to have dulled his enthusiasm for detective work, however, and Kim watches Harry rummage through Klaasje’s drawers and cabinets again with some interest. He doesn’t suspect there will be anything left for them to find - Klaasje was a crafty one, and thorough at that - but Harry has a habit of finding stones left unturned and, well, upturning them.

Harry peers into Klaasje’s medicine cabinet, barren where it was once lush and fruitful, and says, “I was hoping that gift might be in here.”

“Maybe it’s for the best that it isn’t. I’m not a fan of ‘gifts’.” Kim’s hand drifts to his holster, an unconscious comfort.

He closes it again with a frustrated grunt. Then he rests his forehead briefly against the mirrored glass, an arm shielding his eyes from the fluorescent lights above. Kim thinks he hears him swear under his breath. He can’t be sure, but it would be likely. Very likely.

“I’ve always wondered, Lieutenant-Yefreitor,” Kim starts slowly, “if this makes you better at detective work. The drugs, that is. Is that why you’re looking for them?” He measures his voice carefully. It is a sensitive subject, and Harry is a sensitive man. No amount of masculine bravado can disguise that; in fact, it’s had quite the opposite effect.

“What? No. No, it’s not for— it’s just for fun, Kim. It feels good,” Harry insists, words tumbling out from him. “I’m a fucking superstar, alright, I don’t _need_ this stuff to do my goddamn job.”

Kim makes a thoughtful sound. “I see. That makes sense. To tell you the truth, I was considering trying it myself… I could use the edge right around now. But, _khm_ , don’t worry about it. It was just a thought,” he says. The stress and strain of the past few days has weakened his foundations a bit, but he will persevere as he always does.

From across the small bathroom, Harry looks at him, but he’s not looking _at_ him. Rather, _through_ him, eyes glassy. Ah. He’s retreating into himself again. Kim crosses his arms behind his back and taps his foot patiently. Of all his partner’s many (many, many) idiosyncrasies, this is perhaps the easiest to accommodate, if not the least destructive of them. The wind may be speaking to him again, or voices in his head whispering something that isn’t evident to anyone else around him, but it’s not a process that can be rushed, that much is certain.

He can wait. There is time enough for Kim to review a checklist of loose ends for them to tie up - many of them, unfortunately, have snipped themselves of their own accord, leaving them with a scant few leads to meaningfully resolve. Still, there is something satisfying about being able to cross them off the list.

A few minutes pass, and Harry pops back into reality as abruptly as he left it, a curious glimmer in his eye. His posture snaps to attention as he tells Kim, “Stay here. I need to go take care of something.” And before Kim can respond to that, he’s already shuffling out of Klaasje’s room.

Kim blinks at his retreating silhouette. His take-off would have had more impact if he’d gone off running, Kim thinks, and something tells him that’s exactly what he would have done otherwise. As it stands, Kim just pushes his glasses up and trails after him. This sudden change of plan is… mildly alarming, he decides. A three out of ten on the “alarming” scale. It warrants investigation. Harry’s not getting anywhere fast, anyway, and Kim catches up to him as he re-enters his room.

There, he spots Harry digging through his belongings with a graceless desperation, clothes once lovingly-folded and nestled in neat squares now flung onto the floor. Garte would not be pleased. He pulls out pockets, investigates liners, packets and bottles and colorful pills plucked from them as so many treasures and dropped in a growing pile. A dragon’s hoard of vice. The scale ratchets up a few notches. Kim steps forward, ready to intervene. What he doesn’t expect is for Harry to punch pills out of foil and to empty glass vials and to chuck the lot of it into his toilet.

“It’s not a good idea to introduce pharmaceuticals into the sewage system,” Kim points out quietly, but his heart’s not really in it. It’s more perfunctory than anything.

“You know me, Kim. I’m not ‘about’ good ideas,” says Harry. The beer and the wine he kept tucked under the bed follow suit, poured down the tub unceremoniously. “Let me get one last fuck up under my belt, alright? Then I’m done with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“This. All of this. I don’t want to see this shit anymore.” Harry chucks an empty packet of drouamine onto the floor with a particular vehemence.

The stiff line of Kim’s mouth softens. Frankly, he was expecting something more self-destructive. Something that would involve a hefty dose of an opioid antagonist. “I don’t mean to rain on your parade,” he cautions, “but perhaps this is a bad time to start the recovery process. The drouamine I gave you this morning isn’t going to last forever. And there’s still a lot of walking around to do.”

“Something’s always gonna be hurting, isn’t it? It’s not like it makes a difference whether it’s in here or in there,” he says, uncharacteristically open, as he points at his leg and then his head in turn. “I’ve got to start somewhere, so I’m starting here.”

Something in Kim aches on his behalf. “It’s… a good start. I am rooting for you, detective,” he says.

Harry looks up at him. There’s a smile hidden under those whiskers. “Thanks.”

Kim lets him have at it, feigning indifference, but secretly he feels as though he’s been tilted on his axis. He’d gotten used to Harry’s more… unconventional methods. This, however, is not his area of expertise. Being rattled like this is for junior cops, not for seasoned detectives, he tells himself. Say nothing, and let him work it out.

However, that disorientation lingers longer than he expects. Harry’s not _on_ like he used to be, he finds. Thoughts take longer to bubble to the surface as words. And the words he does say are softer, more considered. The garish dragon print is replaced with official RCM outerwear, somber and black. The cap, too.

“That looks good on you,” Kim says, almost as an afterthought. His ears prickle when his brain catches up to the rest of him. The stress must be getting to him in ways he hadn't anticipated.

Harry scratches his face and thanks him again. He can’t recall how often he’s heard the lieutenant say as much to him. Or to anyone. When he overhears Harry thank _Garte_ downstairs, of all people, he nearly has to take a seat.

They appear to have formed an unspoken gentleman’s agreement to forget each other’s past missteps in the wake of the tribunal. Kim has never imagined Harry capable of something so genteel. He doesn’t know what to do with this information, so he processes this as he processes all things: with an entry in his notebook. Things have a way of looking more mundane when presented in reassuring block print.

* * *

Oh, Harry. You’ve made a terrible mistake, haven’t you?

_Yeah, yeah. All kinds. Pick one._

Don’t play coy, Harry-boy. You know what you’ve done, you’ve let all that glittering gold go down the drain. Wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Except now, this time, it’s going to be worse. You’re always getting worse…

_No. It’s not going to be worse this time. It’s going to be different. I’ve changed._

Bold words. But you’re lying to yourself again, Harry. The only change that’s happening to you is deep, deep down, deep in your cells. The basal ganglia. You’re pickled, and you’re pouring yourself out to dry in the sun. Skin cracking. Blood boiling. Salt leaching back into the earth… You could do with some more of those salts. You need them. You won’t be anything without them, will you?

_You’re wrong. I’m more than the chemicals and the electrical impulses. I’m blood, I’m steel, I’ve got eyeballs and a few functioning neurons left._

You’re nothing! Your neurons aren’t you; they’re me, they’re him, they’re her. If there’s anything you are, Harry-boy, it’s a light show. Limelight, bright and hot, passing through a thousand kaleidoscoped polyester filters, burning holes in them and washing them out for good… Bastard colors, all of them, and you want to take them out? They’re the only things that make you look natural.

_I’m not listening to this. I’m going to wake up, and don’t you follow me out there._

* * *

His limbic system was right. He’s made a terrible mistake.

Harry doesn’t need its reedy voice cooing in his ear, smug and effete, to tell him that. He can feel it in the sweat soaking his bedsheets. And in the twitching, the soreness and ague, the palpable unease causing Half Light to flare to life before daylight even hits his eyes. A rabbit thumps and thumps against the walls of his chest. Is he dying? After all he’s been through this past week, he’s going to die in bed, alone, a sad old fuck without even the loving and tender embrace of chemical palliatives?

Every joint in him creaks and pops like the wooden floorboards of that old Dolorian church as Harry hauls himself up again. It’s worse like this, upright. Blood drains from his head, his brain, and pools in his extremities. He can feel it ballooning in his thigh. Stretching sutures to their breaking point. A sick part of him wants to pull his trousers down to his knees, watch them burst like a pimple, red and fat. Catharsis. It’s in short supply. The urge passes as quickly as it came, leaving him nauseous.

Standing doesn’t suit him well, and Harry stumbles out to the hall with his shirt unbuttoned and damp in big, glaring patches. Kim waits for him there, as he always does. His eyes widen at the sight of him.

“Hey, Kim,” Harry slurs, an arm braced on the doorframe, “I think I’m dying.”

“You do look, how should I say… fucking terrible. Though I wouldn’t be so sure that you’re _dying_.”

“Explain this, then,” he snaps, and he grabs Kim’s wrist to plant the flat of his palm against his palpitating heart. _It’s so thin,_ Physical Instrument murmurs, _that little spur of bone, you could probably break him like a twig_. His heartbeat’s ratcheted up so high that Kim’s got to feel it, even through those leather gloves. “’m having a heart attack or some shit.”

Kim’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. His mouth opens, but a good moment passes before he gets out, “This is _tachycardia_ , detective, not cardiac arrest. You seem anxious. Are you panicking right now?”

“The fuck I am. I’ve never panicked in my life.”

He’s clearly not convinced, and when he starts to pull his hand away, Harry lets go. Authority rears up, affronted. _What are you doing?_ Keep him there. Make him feel it, make him understand it until the beat’s coming out his ears and his fingers push through flesh to clutch your heart in his palm. He’ll squeeze until it stops.

Harry shakes himself as a shiver crawls up his back. Can’t stand that guy. His own hand hangs in midair long past when Kim wipes his damp glove on the front of his pants, and then he slowly lowers it.

“Well, if you were, hypothetically, having a panic attack, I would say your long-term prognosis looks considerably better than the alternative. And we would not have to cause a scene by hightailing you back to Jamrock for medical treatment,” Kim says.

He narrows his eyes. Oh, Harry knows what Kim’s doing. He’s being _handled_. His ego squirms, restless, but ultimately nestles back into his gut. He _likes_ being handled. In the back of his mind, Authority spits at him.

“If, hypothetically, that’s what was happening, what the hell would I do about it?” Harry asks him, a touch abashed.

“The first thing I would do is sit back down. Passing out is a very real possibility, and it would be a good idea to minimize the damage.” As he speaks, he walks through the door, past Harry. Harry can’t help but follow. It’s easier than trying to work out a plan on his own right now. “Take deep breaths. Anxiety is characteristic of many withdrawal symptoms… alcohol and opioids at the least. It is purely physiological. It will pass,” he informs Harry.

All Kim has to do is look at the bed, sheets still tangled from the night’s sweaty furor, and Harry takes the hint. He’ll take any excuse to get off his feet right now, anyway. The actual words Kim says to him cease to be as important as the fact that he is saying them, his voice as low and slow as the rumbling of a lorry over mosaic streets. When Kim instructs him to focus on something concrete, something with a physical sensation, Harry doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s got it right here.

The rabbit kicking off in him slows, bit by bit.

Gentle words can’t get Harry fully back up to snuff, though. His heart’s still beating too fast, even if he doesn’t feel like it’s going to kill him anymore. Might be worse if he’s not actually dying yet, he thinks. That means that things can only keep going downhill from here. Anxiety isn’t his fucking _bag_ , anyway. It’s not like him. Makes him itch for a drink. Even a cheap-shit lager would warm his belly and make him feel more at home in his own skin.

When he gets his shit together and they make their way down to the bar, Harry’s eyes linger too long on the rows of bottles behind Garte, half-full and tantalizingly iridescent. His hand starts toward his wallet, then stops. There’s too much reál burning a hole in his pocket. _Don’t touch it. Not now_ , Volition tells him. _You’ll be stronger once you’re outside._

Garte gives him a funny look - he must have been staring. Harry clears his throat and walks away as quickly as he can manage. It’s more of a clumsy waddle than a sprint like the last time.

Once they’re in the square, Harry fishes out all the money he can find on his person, both cheered and distressed by every slick black bill he finds. There’s more than he expected. He even finds a fat ten reál note tucked in his shoe. Kim watches him, curious. Then curiosity turns to surprise as Harry shoves the lot of it at him.

“Here,” he says gruffly. “Hang onto this for me, would you? Don’t trust myself with it.”

Kim doesn’t accept the wad of reál right away, instead crossing his arms in front of his chest. “What is this, detective?”

“It’s cash. What’s it look like, _Detective_ Kitsuragi?”

 _The first time he uses my official title, and it’s to mock me?_ Esprit de Corp transmits to him, the facsimile of Kim’s voice coming through as ‘dryly amused’. “It looks like you are about to do something foolish. Or dangerous. It is only my responsibility to ask questions and _detect_ ,” he says aloud.

“It’s the opposite of those things, actually. Just take it. You don’t even have to keep it, I just can’t have it on me right now.”

Kim’s mouth opens like he’s about to say something, then thinks better of it, realization dawning on him. “I… think I understand,” he concedes. He accepts the crumpled wad of reál, and begins to unfold each bill and sort them by denomination. “I won’t be able to do this for you forever, but I can hang onto it until we solve the case, at least. By then you will have to come up with your own coping methods for resisting temptation.”

Harry lets out a sigh of relief he hadn’t realized he was holding in. “Thanks, Kim,” he smiles. Kim falters briefly in his sorting, then makes a low sound of acknowledgment.

The thing about detective work, Harry realizes as they wind their way through Martinaise one last time, is that it’s a real bitch and a half when you’re at rock bottom. Or close to it, anyway. He aches all the way down to his bones, muscles tensing and twitching to exhaustion. It only makes the itch that much more pointed.

Even Cuno can tell he’s fucked, though he still makes good on his promise to call Harry a foul slur or two every time they speak. “Sad old fuck, lookin’ like the shit the dog brought in, how’re you supposed to be all Dick Mullen and shit when you’re not even riding the lightning,” he rattles off, something vaguely related to pity in his wild eyes. “Cuno can fix that shit up for you like nothin’. I know you got dosh, fuckin’ saw you paying off Specs over there, fuckin’ corrupt shit. Cuno can dig it.”

“Thanks, but no,” Harry says, suddenly very tired. He’d come round this way for a reason, but his brain’s half-pickled still and he can’t remember why anymore.

* * *

This time, he lays his head down to sleep, and there are sparks of activity behind his eyelids. Decrepit electrical pathways flicker to life for the first time in - fuck, who knows how long. That was what he was trying to forget, wasn’t it? Tonight, Harry dreams.

He stands in the square again, feet planted in the lingering remains of tire tracks. Kortenaer’s shadow stretches out to infinity. The mercenaries and the Hardie boys slide around like chess pieces across a board, unnatural and occasionally jerking from one point in space to another. His own body doesn’t respond to his commands. It simply acts. It is a vessel, and he is behind its eyes, and nothing else.

In slow motion he watches, helpless, as the tension stretches and snaps again. The bug-eyed fuck raises his rifle, Harry fires, and blood spurts from the scab leader’s neck again. He takes a bullet to the leg again, and it hurts just the same as it did the first time around. Exquisite agony. The best. But his mind does not do him the kindness of releasing him to the waking world. He lies there, losing body heat to the earth again.

Kim drops to his knees, eyes wide with desperation, and Harry opens his mouth but he can say nothing. Not this time. He sees every agonizing inch that de Paule’s arm drops in order to line up the perfect shot. He howls, and he can feel the strain of his lips, a hot and wet _something_ like blood running down his face, but no one else seems to hear. This time, Kim doesn’t move.

The bullet strikes him square in the back of the head. Death is instant.

Look at him. Look at him again - the bullet spirals back out, a film played in reverse, and then it is fired again, and again. Harry feels the weight of Kim fall onto him in an endless loop, and he can’t even raise his hand to touch him. Some comfort that would be to a dead man. It should have been him, he thinks, useless weight that he is.

Harry jerks awake, eyes and nose foul with tears. The afterimage lingers in his vision when he closes his eyes.

* * *

As they make their way toward the coast, Kim can’t shake the feeling of eyes burning holes in the back of his neck. Yes, Evrart Claire has his eyes everywhere, but Kim has long since grown accustomed to that. This is different.

This is Harry, he quickly figures out. He keeps catching Harry furtively stealing glances at him when he thinks Kim’s not looking, but Harry’s eyes always snap back eventually. As if he’s worried that Kim will disappear if he ever averts his gaze. Like he's some kind of cryptid. His reaction speed isn’t what it used to be just a few days ago, and he must think he’s being stealthy about it. (He isn’t.) Kim tactfully doesn’t mention it.

The air is cold and crisp, worming its way inside his jacket. Kim represses a shiver. Somehow, Harry’s comfortable - and downright sweating - in that dreadful mesh shirt alone, his RCM jacket slung over a shoulder some time ago. He will have to keep an eye on him.

Harry strikes up a conversation with the net-picker in the hopes of finding a way to the island, but his speech is stilted, interrupted occasionally to suck in sharp breaths through his nose. Kim frowns.

“Detective, are you alright?”

Harry keeps his eyes trained on Lilienne, deliberately avoiding Kim’s gaze, but the wan face and the excessive perspiration give him away. “I’m fine. Now, back to the— the matter of the boat—”

A strange gurgle erupts from him and he claps a hand over his mouth. Something wars in Harry’s mind, the whites of his eyes darting back and forth, but it doesn’t look like a fight that he’s winning.

“Sorry,” Harry gasps as he stumbles to the pier’s edge. Then he falls to his knees and begins to retch.

Kim’s at his side in a heartbeat, bracing himself on a knee. “Vomiting,” he says, partially for Lilienne’s benefit, “characteristic of late-stage opioid withdrawal. You really haven’t taken any since you came to, have you?” As he speaks, he first lays a hand on Harry’s shoulder, then decides it would be more prudent to hold Harry’s hair back for him. So he does. Kim cards it back from his face, acutely grateful for his gloves - it’s greasy despite the recent wash.

Harry doesn’t answer, as he is too busy expelling the contents of his stomach into the bay. No matter. Kim will take this as an affirmation.

“He’s gone cold turkey, has he,” Lilienne says from behind them. She joins Kim with a hand at Harry’s back. “Poor bastard. You’re in for a rough time.”

“God— fuggoff, would you, m’fine.” Harry immediately disproves himself by retching again.

“You might be able to fool some of those ladies back on the mainland, but you can’t fool me, officer. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. It’s never pretty,” she reprimands. Her voice is matter-of-fact, but sympathy bleeds through in the form of her hand idly rubbing his back in small circles.

They stay there like that until he’s finished, hashing out the details of borrowing the skiff while Harry vomits and groans in turn. Kim doesn’t enjoy seeing him like this. If he were in the business of judgment, of determining deservedness, he would say that Harry doesn’t deserve this. Comfort, that is. He has spent a long time - longer than the past week, longer than Kim truly understands - wrecking his metaphorical Kineema without a hint of self-awareness. Penance is a key tenet of many major religions, that of the Dolorians but one of them.

But Kim finds, as he keeps Harry’s hair from falling into his face again, that he doesn’t want that penance to come like this: receptors howling in agony as they adjust to the new normal. He has seen it a dozen times over, in people much less deserving of it than his partner. He lies in a bed of his own making. And yet, there’s a sea change afoot in Harry that has nothing to do with the misery inflicted by his limbic system. It’s impossible not to draw from a deep well of compassion inside himself.

After a while - Kim estimates it can’t be more than twenty minutes - Harry finally catches his breath and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “ _Fuck_ ,” he hisses.

“You alright, then?” Lilienne asks.

“Yeah. I’m great. Just getting the demons out, you know how it is.”

Kim meets her eyes behind his back, and she nods. It’s unfortunate that both of them _do_ know how it is. He draws a little strength from that commonality of experience, grateful that he is perhaps not alone in dragging Harry back up from the bottom of the barrel. In some small way.

She agrees to lend them her skiff on the condition that they not run it aground on the concrete rubble, and that they don’t tool around on a joy ride. He wouldn’t dream of it, personally. Under ordinary circumstances, he might expect Harry to argue, but his face droops and his eyes sink a little further into his skull. Kim gets the uncanny feeling that some animating spirit has vacated from him, leaving him visibly deflated. Harry grunts his thanks and motions for Kim to hop in alongside him.

 _This is it, then,_ Kim muses. His heart beats faster, excitement and dread creeping up on him at the same time. The solution waits out there for them, in theory. And the end. The bay spreads out underneath them in all directions, it seems, bottle-brown shallows fading into verdant blue-green. Unfathomable shadows linger just under the surface. The water’s placid surface froths and parts in a narrow wake behind them.

He navigates them, and Harry sits across from him, his right leg jittering up and down. Sad FM spills out over the coast, a woman’s moribund, lilting voice, from the cassette player in his lap. Kim swallows past a sudden lump in his throat.

“You know, I’m tired of being the bad guy,” Harry speaks up at last, voice hoarse.

“I wouldn’t call you that. You are an officer of the RCM, and you do good work.”

A laugh bubbles up from Harry, but it is not a pleasant one. “Do you have any idea how many problems I’ve been causing?”

“I have some idea, yes. I’ve been along for most of them,” Kim says.

“Ha, ha.” He doesn’t sound amused. “It’s all because of this shit. Got no self-control. I’m not like you. I’ve got a… what do you call it… An ‘addictive personality’. Swear I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

Harry pauses, but Kim doesn’t respond yet, unsure of the best response. 

“I can’t _just have one_ ,” he continues, heat in his voice. “One always turns into two, then three, then a little dash of something else just to spice things up, then I’m having a goddamn mental breakdown and sucking off my gun in the middle of a pawnshop. And there’re so many holes in my stupid brain that I _can’t even remember it_ ,” Harry spits. “You think I want to see you doing the same shit? Fuck!”

Kim frowns. “Me? Is that what this is about?”

“Course it is. It’s about you, it’s about her, it’s about fucking Cuno,” he says, hands gesticulating wildly with each example. Tears prickle in the corner of his eyes. “Giving speed to a goddamn kid. I’m a— I’m a moral degenerate, you know? Addict, pervert, drunk, fucking egomaniac, all that. But you, you’re, you’re decent. You’re normal. You’re fucking _cool_ , Kim!”

“You keep saying that,” he mutters in disbelief.

“You are!”

After a moment’s reflection, weighing the pros and cons, Kim says to him, “Detective, I’m going to tell you something. I believe you are… idealizing me. You are ascribing a goodness and,” he grimaces, “a _coolness_ to me that I do not have. I am just a man. I have my flaws, and you’ve seen them in action yourself. But you are choosing to ignore them because it is easier to believe that you are hopeless, and not capable of change.”

For once, it is Harry who is quiet and still, and Kim pushes on. “You are not a failure for struggling with addiction, and I am not a saint for being able to avoid it. It is only luck that the patterns of our neurons ended up so differently,” he emphasizes.

“I always did think you were cool, though,” Harry mumbles, and then he is silent for the rest of the trip. He stares at his shoes as if he hopes to find answers there, answers that neither Kim nor anyone else can give him.

* * *

He dreams deep on the threadbare mattress, but he does not dream of Dora. Instead, his vision crystallizes, blooming into a thousand different trajectories, a thousand different fractal deaths. Dora lingers in but a few of their facets. His eyes glaze over behind his eyelids, glistening blue and gold and long, golden hair receding into the background. For once, she has no control over him.

More numerous are slivers of colored glass, each a glimpse into another world, one that has diverged from the world he knows now with the violence of a dice roll splitting possibilities in two. Harry lifts one and holds it up to his face. In it, he sees through Klaasje’s window, a tattooed man in rut seconds before the light leaves his eyes. If she were to lean up, perhaps to kiss him - yes - she raises herself directly into the bullet’s path, its trajectory sewing the two of them together in life’s most permanent fashion. And there, a few days out, Harry does not go on a suicidal bender in the Whirling-in-Rags. He does it in the privacy of his tenement, where there are no standers-by to stop him.

In another, Ruby lives, and dies again. In another, he had the words to say to her, the right ones to thread the needle and keep her living and breathing. Something reaches into his chest and squeezes tight. It would have been so easy. Harry presses himself up against its silvered surface until he’s tumbling through, but when he opens his mouth to speak them aloud, a filter between brain and tongue twists them into nothing. She laughs darkly, but lowers her gun anyway.

Another sliver, in fact many more, glimmer with occluded sun rays and smoke. Peals of gunfire. The darkness encroaching upon his vision. Harry sifts through them all, and in all of them, the mercenary bastard gets him good in the leg. Distantly, it throbs in acknowledgment.

He’s seen these dreams before, in fitful withdrawal briefly interrupted by sleep. Harry’s stomach sinks. He knows what lies in them already, Volition hisses in his ear, and he doesn’t need to see it again. It will only make things worse. But Pain Threshold grips him as tightly as a real human hand at the nape of his neck, demanding that he look. He must. He needs to know and to remember and to bury it as deep in his gut as a knife. Twist it, and never forget.

So he peels his eyes open and watches as the words fail to leave him in time. It’s deceptively quick - Kim takes a cold bullet to the back of his head and slumps over him, and that is that. Harry watches it happen over and over. In that universe, his voice cracks. In yet another, he keeps quiet on purpose, out of cowardice. Harry’s eyes prickle and burn with tears. He wouldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t.

 _I saved him_ , Authority informs him coldly, _not you. Not your limp and fetid spine. Remember that._

 _But what are you if not the sum of us, all your dizzying facets?_ Conceptualization, long silent, speaks up at last to defend him.

_Something more._

Harry watches as the film reel of his mind spins backward and plays itself again. He can’t bring himself to look away as Kim falls, frame by frame preserved in afterimages. They could all have died like this. No fanfare. At one moment there is a light in the darkness, and in the next it has been snuffed. There is only the residual body heat bleeding out of Kim’s body and into Harry’s skin, and then there is nothing.

He wakes with a gurgling breath lingering in his ear. The sun has dropped below the horizon and left light purpling like a bruise in its absence, casting the abandoned bunker in soft shadow. As far as he can see, he is alone in here. The thought leaves him cold. Harry pays no mind to the creak of his bones or the agony shooting up from his thigh as he lumbers off in search of Kim and the deserter, and Endurance, for once, smiles upon him.

Outside, Harry spots Kim leaning against a young birch, using the last of the twilight to continue filling out his report. His head rises at the sound of Harry’s footsteps.

“Ah, detective. You’re awake. Are you feeling any—”

Harry interrupts Kim by gathering him into a big, sweeping hug. The word “better” gets squeezed out from him. Kim’s body is stiff, arms crushed against his sides, but when Harry buries his face in his shoulder and his own shoulders shake with something that might be a sob (not that he would ever admit it), he softens. And his free hand pats awkwardly at Harry’s back.

After a good while, all the rigid-spined voices in his head voice their opposition in an uncomfortable buzz. In spite of them, Electrochemistry demands he stay there. Maybe slide his hands under Kim’s shirt, soak in the warmth and feel the ridges of his back. _See if he works out_ , Physical Instrument tells him. But he definitely does not do that. This is strange enough as it is, and eventually the dissonance becomes too much to bear. Harry lets him go and quickly wipes his face with his sleeve before Kim can see the wetness there.

The lieutenant clears his throat. “This isn’t like you, detective.”

“Later. I’ll explain later. Not in front of,” Harry says, gesturing toward the deserter. Dros sits just as placidly as he was when Harry left him.

Kim quirks an eyebrow at him, and comments, “It is a little too late to worry what he thinks about you, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Harry deliberately avoids looking straight at him.

The journey back to the mainland is quiet and uneventful. They’re hardly trawling new ground, so there’s no need for Harry to stand as a figurehead with sad tunes in tow. Instead he sits across from Kim and listens to the gentle waves lapping at the sides of the boat. It takes a few starts for words to happen, but Kim waits patiently for him to get them out.

“I’ve been dreaming,” Harry says, after a protracted struggle.

Kim blinks. “Congratulations.”

“No, listen,” he insists, “this is new for me, alright? I don’t remember having dreams before. It’s all just… black. Like I’m staring at the back of my eyelids. But I don’t think it was always like that… I think I was trying to make a dream _go away_. ‘S how I ended up in this big crock of shit, Kim.”

“You mean, you terrorized the local populace and drove your station’s Kineema into the river because of… a dream,” Kim says, voice flat. He’s both incredulous and clearly unimpressed.

“When you put it that way, it sounds worse.”

“Please, lieutenant-yefreitor, enlighten me. How do you make it sound _better_.”

Harry brushes him off with a sweeping hand gesture. “Look, that’s not the point. The point is, Kim, is that it worked. I stopped dreaming. Got rid of it so good that I can’t really remember what it was I was dreaming of in the first place,” he says.

Across from him, Kim keeps his eyes on the shoreline. “As to be expected. Heavy drug use and binge drinking will do that to you.”

“I’m aware! For God’s sake, I’m trying to tell you something and you’re acting like a bloody walking dictionary!”

Kim’s head jerks toward him, eyes wide, and regret immediately makes Harry’s stomach drop.

“Fucking— shit. Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” he mumbles.

“No, you’re right. I have a… bad habit of trying to be clinical in situations like these. It was not intentional,” Kim says, head lowered briefly in apology before he turns back to the bay. “Go on.”

He wets his lips to give himself time to think. Then he says, “Well, since I threw out all my shit, they’ve been coming back. And I keep dreaming about the tribunal.” Harry pauses to take a wavering breath, and continues, “It’s disorienting. I keep seeing you taking that bullet from that scab fuck. And you don’t make it. And for what? No other reason than— than me swinging my dick around.”

Kim remains silent, waiting for him to fill in the gaps.

“It’s making me reconsider some things. Priorities and all that shit. Dunno what the point of me strutting around like a big fucking cockatoo is if… You know. If the only person in all of Martinaise who likes me enough to give me the time of day is bleeding out in the goddamn town square. Because of Detective Dick Mullen and his big fucking mouth.”

“But I’m not, Harry,” Kim says quietly. “You handled it as well as you could. You saved many lives that day. Mine included.”

“But what if? I could’ve been drunk as a skunk again, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it from happening. There’s a lot of things I could’ve stopped if I’d had my shit together,” Harry mutters.

“Do you remember the production schedule we found, for that Wirrâl expansion? There are as many possibilities for what could have been as there were potential endings. We can’t stop to worry about ‘what if’s or ‘could have been’s, or we will end up like that project,” says Kim.

He steers the skiff alongside the pier, bringing it to a stop, then turns to look at Harry head-on. There’s a soft, wry smile on his face. “Stagnant. We are detectives, after all, and we can only keep looking forward if we are to do our jobs successfully.”

Harry sighs. Kim’s right, he knows it, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it just yet. That will mean ending the conversation, getting off the boat, facing a tribunal of a different kind. Going their own separate ways. _Are you ready for that?_ Composure asks him. Pain Threshold twists that knife, interrogating him, _Will you be able to live without him? You think you can do this on your own? You’ve never been able to manage it before._

 _You can._ Volition speaks up in his defense for the second time in as many days, catching him by surprise. Harry straightens his back and runs a hand through his hair.

“Guess you’re right. At least I get to be here in _this_ ending with you, Kim. Something to be glad about. I dunno where I’d be right now if it weren’t for you,” he says, voice breaking from the battery of emotion swelling up in him. It’s unfamiliar. Alien, even. But when the hell else is he going to get the chance to say—

 _That you trust him?_ Esprit de Corps.

 _That you would be nothing without him? A big fat fucking nothing?_ Endurance.

 _That you love him?_ Electrochemistry.

He could say all those things, and more, but they twist themselves up into knots on his tongue and he finds himself at a loss for words. Probably for the best - Kim’s ears are burning enough as it is. Hopefully, his mumbled “so, thanks, Kim” will suffice.

There’s always something new waiting over the horizon, Harry realizes. Gossamer bands of orange and gold, waiting for him. He will suffer, as God knows he has suffered, but there has to be something more than the oblivion closing in on his back. Untold paths spinning out from him for the first time in a long, long time. He has only to follow them to their ends.

**Author's Note:**

> like my work? catch me on [tumblr](https://tigerdrop.tumblr.com)!


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